(On June 9th Agonia Records released In Death, the latest album by the Swedish black metal band Svartsyn. As always, it was all the work of Ornias, this time aided again by the drummer Hammerman. Norway-based Karina Noctum was able to put questions to Svartsyn, and she brings us the results of the dialogue here today.)

Svartsyn is a Swedish one-man band that started in 1991 under the name Chalice, renamed Svartsyn three years later, and ever since it has stayed true to the cold and dark Black Metal sound. Svartsyn is at the lifeless heart of Black Metal.

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I think Svartsyn style is kind of trance-inducing, pretty dense. How do you achieve this sound?

I follow my instinct of how I want my sound. I work very hard to achieve this sound.Continue reading »

Due in part to yet another mini-vacation this past weekend, an entire week has passed since the last time I was able to compile a round-up of new songs and videos, though my comrade DGR helped fill that gap with a compilation of notable death metal yesterday. As a consequence of so many days passing, I have a massive list of new things I’d like to recommend.

Confronted with such a daunting task, I just gave in to impulse, which is par for the course. And today’s impulse was to focus only on some of new music I heard for the first time today — which means that massive list is no shorter than it was before I started writing this post. With luck, I’ll have time during the balance of this week to do some picking and choosing from it for another edition of SEEN AND HEARD.

SVARTSYN

As previously reported here, the Swedish black metal band Svartsyn have a new album named In Death that’s scheduled for release by Agonia Records on June 9th. The first single, which I wrote about in that earlier post, was a stunner named “Seven Headed Snake“, and this morning brought a second track — “Black Thrones of Death“. It’s left me even more excited about this new album.Continue reading »

Yeah, I know I did two of these round-ups yesterday, but I’m drowning in new music — but it’s the good kind of drowning, where you see the bright white light at the end of the tunnel and will never figure out in your moment of euphoria before the void takes you that it was just some dude with a flashlight trying to find your corpse in the pond you fell into while wasted.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I’m drowning in good new metal. However, I’m running out of time before I have to tend to my fucking day job, so I’m just going to pick quickly, one each from Columns A, B, C, and D from the genre menu, and cut back on the usual verbosity. Expect another round-up tomorrow.

DYING FETUS

Here’s a video that appeared today for “Fixated On Devastation”, a track from the new Dying Fetus album, Wrong One To Fuck With. It was filmed by Mitch Massie live at the Voltage Lounge in Philadelphia, PA, on March 17th.Continue reading »

(We welcome back Neill Jameson (Krieg) with the first installment of a multi-part post devoted to under-the-radar black metal releases worthy of greater attention.)

While it seems a lot of what’s going around in black metal these days is more driven by aesthetics and shock value than ever, it still has a certain potency that other genres within metal don’t seem to be able to match. That being said, I can’t think of a lot of current bands that I obsessively listen to the way I would when I was younger and potentially more full of shit than I am now at this ripe old age.

Elderly bitching aside, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about records and bands that went somewhat under the radar at the time of release and sit in relative obscurity now, mostly because people have shitty taste (myself included), so I figured I’d use a column or two and shed some light on some records in the genre I’ve never been able to walk away from for whatever reason, the sort of releases that if I ever came into an excess of money I’d love to release on vinyl so that they would sit in my office unsold while people download it along with some weird virus that broadcasts Russian incest porn to their e-mail contacts. Here’s a few to start with:Continue reading »

As another year gasps its last breath I’m once again feeling forlorn about my inability to review more of the fine metal I heard over the last 12 months. There’s no way to catch up now, of course, but I still feel compelled to make one last gasp of my own. With so much to choose from, I’ve chosen somewhat randomly,focusing on two excellent short releases that display just a fraction of metal’s phenomenal diversity. This is the first of these two reviews; the second will follow shortly.

SVARTSYN

I vividly remember the first time I listened to black metal. It was about 9 years ago, and it was something from one of Rotting Christ’s earlier albums recommended by a friend who felt I needed to broaden my horizons. I remember having a visceral negative reaction. It was so much more harsh than the metal I’d been listening to, and my mind just wasn’t ready for it.Continue reading »

Now that I have your attention, thanks to that new album cover above, I have three more random pieces of new music to share with you today.

BOB MALMSTRÖM

It’s been way too long since we’ve featured anything by Finland’s Bob Malmström here at NCS. I first tumbled to them in December 2011 after catching their official music video for a song called “Eliten”, which was a kind of searing, headbanging, thrash/hardcore/punk onslaught, as rendered by a bunch of dudes in suits sipping champagne. For a fair amount of background about the band’s politically incorrect philosophies and interests, you might check out the post I wrote at that time.

Today brought a fresh reminder of how much ass this band kick: the debut of a lyric video for the title track from a new Bob Malmström album entitled Punkens framtid, which, according to Google Translate, means “Punk future” in Swedish. The new song rocks so hard it nearly knocked me flat, but I somehow kept my feet despite bouncing around in a solo mosh pit of my own making.Continue reading »